


No Place Like Home

by RoseMeister



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), The Wizard of Oz & Related Fandoms
Genre: Character Study, F/F, lesbian dorothy is my aesthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6985969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseMeister/pseuds/RoseMeister
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Oz. The memory of it burns deep within her bones. Without that memory she wouldn't be the woman she was. She'd be someone else, maybe even someone her family could be proud of, someone who could carry their name on into the traceless infinity. </i> </p>
<p>Dorothy loses her home, but gains a better one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Place Like Home

She is eighteen when Aunt Em gets ill. It wasn't the normal kind of sickness, the kind Dorothy had seen before, where Aunt Em would recover after a week or so. It was worse. Much worse. She couldn't leave bed, couldn't work. She faded into a shadow of who she used to be.

Dorothy picked up the slack, of course. She was already stronger than Aunt Em had been, before she was sick, and she was almost as stubborn. It was hard work without Aunt Em, who had always done more than one person's fair share of work. But Dorothy would never complain. Neither would Uncle Henry. Their days fell into a predicable pattern, they'd spend most of their days outside working, and their nights huddled around Aunt Em's bed.

She was getting worse. Dorothy knew that. It terrified her, in a way. Aunt Em had always protected her. Always. But there was a whispering voice in the back of her mind that told Dorothy that she'd be recommitted within weeks if Aunt Em was gone.

Uncle Henry would never fight for her. She was the only help he had on the farm, yes, but she's seen his side glances, his long silences. She knew he'd rather hire some strangers to help than keep her.

Her fears made her feel selfish, in a way. Here was her Aunt, who'd raised and guided her all her life, and she still wasted time worried about herself rather than the fact that her Aunt was dying.

She didn't want Aunt Em to die. She didn't deserve it. She was stubborn, brave, and far too good for this world. With a heart like hers, she deserved an advantageous niece, and not Dorothy, not a girl stained with memories of a world that shouldn't exist. A girl who lived for months in a dream, who returned and wouldn't shut her stupid mouth about the wonders she'd seen, who was institutionalised for six months before Aunt Em could get her out again, and who still refused to forget those spectral memories. Aunt Em had loved her after all of that. Believed her too.

Uncle Henry went to town one afternoon, looking for some extra wire to fix a broken fence they'd been working around for weeks, and Dorothy was left with little else to do other than to sit by Aunt Em's bed, hold her hand and pray to a long silent God.

Aunt Em was weak, but conscious. She smiled a little when Dorothy sat down.

"Where's your Uncle?" She asks.

Dorothy squeezes her hand. "In town."

"He left you here?"

Dorothy sighs. "No one in town wants to see me, Aunt Em."

"I'm sorry this happened to you."

Dorothy is silent.

"You deserved better, you know. Deserved a chance at a normal life. To meet a nice man, settle down."

Dorothy rubs Aunt Em's hand, tries to ignore the pounding in her ears, the deafening heartbeat of her nerves. She shifts her chair closer to Aunt Em, and glances around the room, as if someone else could have snuck in while she wasn't looking, a phantom waiting to hear her speak. She shakes her head briefly.

"Aunt Em." She starts, her voice nearly breaking. She coughs and starts again. "I never told you before, but I... I'm a lover of women. I'm sorry."

Aunt Em falls quiet. Dorothy can't match her searching gaze, and her eyes fall down to the bundled sheets again.

"You've never been content to be normal, have you?" Aunt Em says finally. "I should have known."

Dorothy feels sick. She moves to get up, but Aunt Em seats her with a glare, and she folds in on herself as much as she can.

"I'm not sure why God did it. Gave you such a hard road to walk on." Aunt Em squeezes her hand this time. "But, Dorothy, in the last few years you've grown into one of the strongest people I've ever known. I'm sorry that I'll probably be gone soon. And I won't be able to protect you anymore. But if anyone can do it, it's you."

Dorothy hugs her. Gently, ever worried about her condition, but still long enough for Aunt Em to know.

And when Uncle Henry returns home to find his wife and niece in tears, he doesn't ask. To him, the answer seems obvious.

* * *

 

When Aunt Em passes, it feels as if the house has joined her in the afterlife. It's deathly quiet, hollow without her presence. Even with uncle Henry in her sight, the house is desolate. As empty as her grave is full.

They're still in their funeral clothes, even if the funeral ended hours and hours ago. Alone, just the two of them, and there's an accusing bitterness cloaked deep inside Uncle Henry's eyes. Dorothy doesn't need it, not when she already certain she's the cause for their solitude.

If it weren't for her, her and her stubbornness, her belief in a dream she had as a child, her madness and her Aunt's defence of it, the table they sat at would be too small to fit all the mourners. The entire town would have graced her funeral, washed her spirit off to Heaven in a river of their tears. As it is, the river is barren, Uncle Henry's and Dorothy's eyes too dry for all they've lost.

He might even blame her for her Aunt's sickness, as if her delusions had dragged a deathly illness with them back from Oz. But there's nothing Uncle Henry can accuse her of that hasn't first arisen in her own mind.

Uncle Henry stands and begins boiling water over the stove. His back is to her, and he doesn't move, just stares at the boiling water, oblivious to any cautions Aunt Em might have given if she were there, warning him about the speed of water under the human gaze. But Aunt Em is gone, gone from the house, gone from the planet, gone from their lives. So he stands and watches it, water easier to look at than his niece.

"You want tea?" Uncle Henry asks, gruff and low. His voice is raw, unused, rough as if he hadn't spoken in years.

Dorothy's head snaps up in surprise. "Yes." She says, but Uncle Henry hadn't waited for a reply, and had already started making two cups before he'd even asked the question.

He brings both cups to the table, lays one in front of Dorothy without even looking at her, before sitting down in his own chair, holding the cup in his hands as if he couldn't feel the heat.

Dorothy takes a sip, and almost grimaces at the taste. It's far too strong, bitterness stomping out any other flavour, but it soothes her heart in a way. She doesn't think she could handle it like she'd made it as a child, milken white and sweeter than a smile. This cup tastes as it should, strong and bitter and brokenhearted.

"Dorothy." Uncle Henry says, meeting her eyes as she looks at him. His hands are still locked tight around his cup, but he hasn't drunk any yet. Doesn't look as if he ever will.

Uncle Henry shakes his head, and traps her gaze with an expression she can't read. "What are you going to do now?"

Dorothy doesn't answer, and he frowns at her. "Dorothy. You can't stay here forever."

"Are you kicking me out?" There's an accusation in her tone. A whole novel of meaning hidden between her words. Pages and pages of 'you've been waiting for this haven't you?' And 'if you want me gone just say it.'

"No." Uncle Henry says, and Dorothy frowns at him. "Do you really think I could kick you out, today of all days? If I even tried your Aunt would dig her way out of the ground and kick my ass." He tries a laugh, but the sound is thin and unconvincing, and he stops. "I'm not making you leave. I'm not gonna get you committed again. But you've got to understand. You can't stay here forever. Not when you're..."

"What?"

"That. Not when you take that traditional Kansas stubbornness and turn it towards insisting that your childhood fantasies actually happened. That you landed in a _mystical fantasy land_ instead of disappearing for months and letting your Aunt and me think you were dead. There isn't a life here for people like you. There's not a man within a hundred miles who'd marry a girl like you. Even if he were dead drunk."

Her jaw tightened at that. "When do you want me gone then?"

There's pain in his eyes when he looks at her this time. "I don't hate you Dorothy. Far from it. I'm just trying to help you understand that you've got to make a choice, figure out where to go, because people like you don't belong in a place like this."

Dorothy stands. There's flame in her eyes, fire in her blood. There were kids in town who were convinced that Dorothy had been dragged off to hell in the months she was gone, only for Satan to spit her out again out of disgust, and you'd almost have believed it, looking at her, and the way she nearly conjured flame with the temper in her stare.

"Maybe people like me don't belong anywhere." She spits, and stalks away from the table.

"Dorothy!" Uncle Henry calls out from behind her, but she doesn't stop.

"I'll be packed and ready to leave by tomorrow morning." She stabs back at him, and blocks out the rest of his words as she enters her room.

She doesn't sleep that night. It's impossible to try in a house like this, one where even her Aunt's ghost is achingly absent, where her uncle paces back and forth in his room, occasionally slamming his fists into a wall, and where her heart has already set itself on travel, to a land far beyond where she now resides.

* * *

  
True to her word, Dorothy leaves the next day. Uncle Henry looked like he had wished to say something, but little escapes from him, and it looks as if there was a message imprisoned deep within his breast, and had he only given it the chance to breathe, Dorothy wouldn't leave. He closes his mouth instead.

He does give her money, though. More than she'd have expected. She tried to refuse it, anger too fresh and bright to easily accept that kind of apology, but there's a small thunderstorm in his eyes, a torrent of meaning she can only skim the surface of.

"Take it." He says. Firm. Unyielding. "For your Aunt's sake."

She accepts it wordlessly, sliding it into her pocket with guilt still clawing at her heart. She doesn't count how much is there, but she can feel from the size of it that the loss must weigh heavy on Uncle Henry's heart. He never had a wealthy farm, even when he was young, and now, alone without a wife and niece to assist him, money should have been one of his utmost concerns.

Yet he still gave her enough to swell her pockets, a blessing to the mad niece likely to reach her ruin within weeks.

She doesn't shadow his doorstep long. She leaves the house she's lived in most of her life, the house that had witnessed most of her childhood, all except those few months she'd spent in a land beyond dreams. She left, feeling the weight of its gaze press on her back, the house and her Uncle watching the start of a journey that she doesn't even know the end to.

* * *

  
Dorothy doesn't know where to go. Where she wants to go. Yet, if she's honest, that's wrong. There's a place that still sings for her return, its rhythm beating within her chest like a second heartbeat.

Oz. The memory of it burns deep within her bones. Without that memory she wouldn't be the woman she was. She'd be someone else, maybe even someone her family could be proud of, someone who could carry their name on into the traceless infinity.

But it is far, far too late to wish that her path had differed, not now, years after she'd lifted the veil of knowledge, had Oz's presence seared into her skin with a passion she can never extinguish.

She lived in that world a scant few months, but even that was enough to change Dorothy forever. She had thought, when she returned to Kansas, that all she wanted was home, family, and the people she remembered, but she was a fool. A ten year old, making the worst mistake of her life, abandoning freedom and adventure for a "stability" that was stolen from her almost immediately.

Her time in Oz was enough to make her evolve, transform Dorothy into a being that couldn't exist peacefully in Kansas anymore. Oz had been branded onto her skin, marking her forever.

Dorothy ends up in towns she doesn't know instead. She doesn't bother to learn their names, not when there is a certainty thrumming through her heart that each one is not enough, that each one will eventually fail her in their own way.

* * *

  
She is walking by a nameless road, on the way to a nameless town, when the storm hits. Picks her up like a leaf in the current of a mighty river, fingers of wind lifting her, stealing sight from her eyes, until she's all but forgotten the existence of land, and instead all there is is air and wind and storms that are guilty of more than the simple theft of breath.

Years after she started dreaming of its return, the storm once more swept into her life, abducting her from the country that is no longer home, and dumping her instead in the land that has saturated her thoughts.

* * *

  
When Dorothy was a child, she spent most of her days daydreaming of a better place. Somewhere more interesting, where she could have adventures, discover secrets. She wanted an escape from the boredom of her life.

Now that she's older, Oz isn't so much a land of dreams any more. It's still an escape from reality, yes, but not from boredom. It's an escape from isolation, alienation, from fear. It's a place she loves just because it isn't Kansas.

Because Kansas isn't home any more.

Most are happy to see her, in a way. And it's nice to see that some care. But even that tastes bitter to her tongue, because she knows the girl they love is the girl she no longer is. They loved a dreamy child, not the embittered adult she has become.

Dorothy had been far too transfigured by Oz to belong in Kansas, but now that she was in Oz, another truth seared its path to her mind, leaving ashen trails in its wake.

She didn't truly belong in Oz, either. She was caught between the two, too much of one to be enough of the other. But she still tried, in her own way.

Dorothy had aided Oz with her purity and innocence once. But those traits have rotten with time, so instead Dorothy finds a sword. Builds a crossbow. Trains. Learns how to protect. She isolates herself from most of those in Oz, and tries to find her own way.

Oz is surely like any other land, and peace will only last so long. And next time, she'll protect it with sword and skill, not smiles and accidents.

* * *

  
Dorothy grew up convinced she'd never get to love. It was impossible in Kansas. Impossible in Oz. She was convinced she'd never hear the music that has commanded the creation of a thousand books, a thousand adventures.

But Ruby swept into her life like a storm. Ruby shattered the locks around her heart with a smile. Ruby possessed her slowly, but Dorothy didn't mind, because for the first time in years moonlight stained her heart.

Dorothy has had crushes before. Flitting things, more drowned in the fear of discovery than anything she might treasure. But this, what Ruby makes her feel, is new. Exciting. Different.

Her Uncle spent years warning her of forests, that they were laced with danger, stained with death. And Dorothy has been has been in Oz long enough that any fear of them has drained away. Become normal. But Ruby changed that. Her skin was awash with the scent of forests, like the very essence of it flowed through her veins as freely as blood, and Dorothy can't think of forests with anything but love, love for the wildness soaked in the shadow of the moon, love for the freedom and promise of adventure that Ruby's mere presence brings.

Dorothy is in love, but with a witch haunting her steps she can't afford to drag Ruby into her problems.

Ruby doesn't deserve to feel any sort of pain because of her.

* * *

  
Dorothy hasn't had a home in years. Not since she lost Aunt Em. Not since the house she'd lived in for years, stained with the lingering traces of childhood, of heartbreak and alienation had decayed before her eyes, memories crumbling out of the wood, and begun to mean nothing to her. That's why it was so easy to leave. That's when she learnt what a home really was, nothing made of wood or stone, but a safe return, the promise of refuge at the end of a journey, not a place but the people who care.

But with Aunt Em dead, there was no one left who cared. And the house was no longer a home, and Dorothy doesn't regret for a second leaving it.

She'd almost forgotten what a home was. She'd lived in areas, built shelters, but the feeling always struck hollow if she tried to call them home. She'd managed to build a house once, sturdy and strong, able to keep out the snow and the rain, but no matter how many times she returned to it, it never felt like home. Not when it was dark, not from an absence of light but from an absence of love. With just Dorothy in it, it could never be a home. Just a fragile mockery of one.

But when she was dragged out of eternal sleep, with an abruptness like a slap, cold shock giving way to comforting warmth, a buzz on her lips, Dorothy's mind is convinced she's felt this way before.

She opens her eyes and sees Ruby, her eyes filled with drenching relief, her arms warmer and more grounding than anything Dorothy has ever felt, and Dorothy knows.

It feels like coming home. It feels like that first step through the doorway, imbued in relief. It feels like safety, like belonging, and if Ruby always makes her feel like this then Dorothy never wants to let her go.

**Author's Note:**

> Ok I hope no one is reading this hoping for extremely accurate historical detail because I'm not from Kansas or even America so I only have limited knowledge about it. But timeline wise I'm pretty sure Dorothy is meant to have been born around 1890, travel to Oz around 1900, when she'd have been ten, and leave the second time around 1908, where, fun fact, there were apparently several tornadoes in and around Kansas on 5-6 June 1908. Regardless, I don't think many people care about all the time I wasted trying to research early 1900s tornadoes in Kansas. 
> 
> Anyway, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Dorothy since the episode aired.


End file.
